Hello. :) I'm half German and I like this cartoon. It's true that German nouns seem very simply constructed! Some of the 'scary-looking long words' are just 3 or 4 small words put together.
Great work! As a German teacher, I absolutely love this! Sorry to be pedantic, but shouldn't word-book be word(s)-book? Wörter is the plural form... Also, I'd love to see "vacuum cleaner" (dust sucker in German) if you do a Part III :-) Cheers
I'm German and what I love about German is that you can express almost everything precisely using ordinay words so that everybody can understand what you are talking about even not knowing a thing of the materia. To give an example. I work in the air line business and whenever a plane takes off or lands a messages is send so that everybody is informed. This messages in English is called "movement". Quite logical but it can mean an endless forms of movemnts that do have nothing to do with air planes. The German word (that hardly anybody uses) is Flugbewegungsmeldung. Looks scary, doesn't it? But it's a composite of the words Flug-flight, Bewegung-movement and Meldung-messages. All of these words are common and known to ordinary people so everybody would know what it's all about. And there are much more examples like this. On the other hand there are words that change their meaning completely just by adding a prefix and this makes it extremely difficult to learn. e.g:
kommen - come einkommen - income auskommen - get along w. st. / subsistence verkommen - degenerate ankommen - arrive abkommen - go astray deviate / agreement umkommen - die Nachkommen - offspring, descendant Vorkommen - occurence, incident aufkommen - emerge.
Es kann vorkommen, daß die Nachkommen mit dem Einkommen nicht auskommen und umkommen It may happen that the descendants do not get along with the income and die
I bet learning German is easy.
ReplyDeleteVocabulary is easy to learn, but when it comes to grammar, it's entirely different.
DeleteRomance languages and other Germanic languages (Scandinavian cluster, Dutch, etc..) are actually easier to learn than German.
DeleteNouns yes. Verbs no.
ReplyDeleteBecause English words like fireman and pineapple are so much more imaginative.
ReplyDeleteGood point! I'm sure we took our inspiration for those words from German
DeleteI wonder how "Ananas" relates to pineapple though.
DeleteProbably the same way as "apple" relates to the fruit.
DeleteHello. :) I'm half German and I like this cartoon. It's true that German nouns seem very simply constructed! Some of the 'scary-looking long words' are just 3 or 4 small words put together.
ReplyDeleteGlad you like it! I do enjoy German, not least of all because of its hilarious word combinations.
DeleteI've got a good one. Living in Graz atm, and there's a Schloss on the Berg in the center of town. You get three guesses what they call the Berg.
ReplyDeleteYup. Schlossberg. Castle-Mountain.
So daring!
DeleteGreat work! As a German teacher, I absolutely love this! Sorry to be pedantic, but shouldn't word-book be word(s)-book? Wörter is the plural form... Also, I'd love to see "vacuum cleaner" (dust sucker in German) if you do a Part III :-) Cheers
ReplyDeleteYou're not being pedantic, you're just doing your job! Yes, it should be "words-book."
DeleteI will add "dust sucker" to the list for Part 3!
I'm German and what I love about German is that you can express almost everything precisely using ordinay words so that everybody can understand what you are talking about even not knowing a thing of the materia.
ReplyDeleteTo give an example. I work in the air line business and whenever a plane takes off or lands a messages is send so that everybody is informed. This messages in English is called "movement". Quite logical but it can mean an endless forms of movemnts that do have nothing to do with air planes. The German word (that hardly anybody uses) is Flugbewegungsmeldung. Looks scary, doesn't it? But it's a composite of the words Flug-flight, Bewegung-movement and Meldung-messages. All of these words are common and known to ordinary people so everybody would know what it's all about. And there are much more examples like this.
On the other hand there are words that change their meaning completely just by adding a prefix and this makes it extremely difficult to learn. e.g:
kommen - come
einkommen - income
auskommen - get along w. st. / subsistence
verkommen - degenerate
ankommen - arrive
abkommen - go astray deviate / agreement
umkommen - die
Nachkommen - offspring, descendant
Vorkommen - occurence, incident
aufkommen - emerge.
Es kann vorkommen, daß die Nachkommen mit dem Einkommen nicht auskommen und umkommen
It may happen that the descendants do not get along with the income and die
This is wonderful - I think it needs to be a comic of its own!
Delete